Miss Julia Meets Her Match (24 page)

“Turn here! Right here!”

I did, and felt the back end of the car slide out of control, the momentum carrying us across the intersection until a wheel bumped against the curb. I fought the steering wheel, moaning and praying as the car straightened out, and I hit it again. A number of right and left turns took us onto a main artery and farther away from the uproar.

“You can slow down now,” Emma Sue said, as coolly as if we weren’t racing from a crime scene. She twisted around and sat in the seat. Her raincoat and pink nightgown were hiked up above her knees, and she jerked on them until she was as prim and proper as she usually was. “Turn on the lights, Julia, and drive like normal.”

“Normal!”
I cried, my voice breaking and my hands trembling on the wheel. “My Lord, Emma Sue, I’m a nervous wreck.” But I slowed and drove sedately down the street that led back toward town. “What happened back there, anyway?”

“I guess I set off the burglar alarm.”

Before I could answer, two sheriff’s cars came flying toward us, light bars flashing and sirens wailing. My heart rate jumped up several notches, as I pulled over to the side of the road. I turned my head aside in case Coleman was in one of them. If he was and he recognized me, I’d be in more trouble than I cared to explain. But both cars blew past, one after the other, rocking us with the shock wave of their passing as they headed for Norma’s house.

Looking around, I saw Emma Sue on the floorboard. “What’re you doing down there?”

She slowly eased back up onto the seat, looking out the back window as the sheriff ’s cars turned into the subdivision. “Trying to hide,” she said. “In case they’re looking for two people.”

“The Lord may be leading you, Emma Sue, but I’m all by myself, here. So don’t be hiding behind me.”

She waved her hand at me, dismissively. Then she settled back in the seat, and I carefully aimed us toward home and as far away as we could get. My nerves calmed down as we got farther along, but I was still in an unsettled state.

The silence stretched out as both Emma Sue and I caught our breath, for all I could think about was getting home, locking the door, and rejoicing that we’d escaped arrest and imprisonment. And rejoicing, too, that we’d not rousted the pastor out of Norma’s bed. Although I admit to a twinge of regret, since that would’ve been something to see.

“I could wring her neck!” Emma Sue suddenly spat out.

“Who?”

“You know who! She booby-trapped that house, I know she did.”

“It was an alarm system, Emma Sue, just like you said. But whatever it was, it was loud enough to wake both her and the dead, if either of them had been there. It certainly did her neighbors. What set it off, anyway?”

“I broke a window in the back door.”

“You
broke and entered!
Emma Sue, that’s a major crime!”

“Well, I only broke. I didn’t get a chance to enter, so it’s not much of one.”

“They Lord,” I said. “I’m glad you didn’t get in. We’d’ve been caught for sure.”

We studied on that for a while, as the blocks lapped away, taking us closer to home and safety. I was finally beginning to relax when she broke the silence again.

“There’s one thing I want to know. If the alarm brought out the neighbors, but not Norma, that means she wasn’t there, right? So, where is she? And where is Larry?”

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? I certainly had no answer, so I didn’t attempt one. Although the Mountaintop Motel edged its way into my mind.

“At least,” she went on, “I’ve done the Lord’s bidding tonight, even if it didn’t work out. He’ll show me what to do next. You know, Julia,” she said, then paused for a minute, “I don’t believe in divorce, so I’ll just have to pray to be able to live with this.” She sighed long and deep.

“Under the circumstances,” I started, then added a disclaimer, “if, that is, the circumstances are what you suspect, you might ought to reconsider what you believe in.”

“But first,” she went on, as if I’d not said a word, “I’ll report him to the presbytery. Yes, that’s what I’ll do, make him publicly acknowledge his wrongdoing and stand in judgment until he’s deemed fit to continue in the ministry. He’ll think twice after that.”

“I expect he will,” I said, just to be saying something since she wasn’t listening.

Then out of the blue, she asked, “Have you ever been fingerprinted, Julia?”

I glanced over at her, wondering why she brought up such a subject. “No, I haven’t.” Then I thought more about it. “Have you?”

“Well, yes, I have. When I was a teenager, I worked a couple of summers as a counselor at a Christian camp. Some money went missing, and they fingerprinted everybody who worked there, which I thought was a very unChristian thing to do.” She didn’t say any more, although I was waiting for it.

“And?”

“And,” she said, “that means my prints might be on file. And now they’re all over the front and back doors of Norma’s house.”

“Oh, my word,” I said, thinking I’d better call Sam and Binkie as soon as we got home. She was going to need a good lawyer. Then I realized there was no need for legal representation, which would only bring her escapade out into the open for everybody to talk about. “It’s all right, Emma Sue, you’ve been to Norma’s under welcoming circumstances, so it’s understandable that your fingerprints’ll still be there.”

“I guess,” she said, somewhat pensively. “They’ll be fresh, though, so somebody’ll know.”

“Well, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it, so I guess this is one of those things you’re just going to have to leave to the Lord.”

“I just hope the police don’t tell Norma.”

Thinking to reassure her, I said, “I doubt she’d have you arrested. But if she tries to, you can just deny it till the cows come home. Nobody can prove otherwise.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. I mean, I wouldn’t volunteer it or anything, but if the police ask me I’ll tell the truth. I am a Christian, you know, Julia.”

“So am I. But I’m not above staying out of jail any way I can. Now, Emma Sue, let me caution you about something. Don’t, whatever you do, get it into your head that you have to confess to the pastor or to Norma what we’ve been up to. If your conscience starts acting up, just remember that I’m in this with you. And it’s my firm belief that what those two don’t know won’t hurt them, whereas it’d play havoc with the two of us.”

“I’ll pray for both of us, Julia.”

I grunted as I pulled up in front of my house. Unfastening my seat belt, I asked, “You going to be all right to drive home?”

“I’m all right.” But she didn’t sound it, and she didn’t look it, for she was making no effort to take my place behind the wheel. “I just wish I knew where he is and what he’s doing.”

“Go home, Emma Sue,” I said as kindly as I could. “You’re tired and not thinking straight. I’ll bet the pastor is there, worried sick about you. In fact,” I went on, trying to lighten her spirits, “you may have some explaining to do, yourself, coming in this time of night.”

“He’ll not get an explanation from me. Let him worry a little after what he’s put me through. But, Julia,” she said, as if she had to reassure me, “I will keep on praying that the Lord will open his eyes to what he’s throwing on the wayside. Because I’ve been a good wife to him. I have, haven’t I?”

“You’ve been the perfect wife for him, Emma Sue,” I said, and a truer word I’d never spoken. “And I think he’s lost his mind, and a whole lot of other things, if he’s thrown you over in favor of Norma Cantrell, of all people. I just can’t believe he’d be taken in by a woman who has one of the worst reputations in town.”

“We mustn’t talk ugly about our neighbors, Julia,” she said in her prim minister’s-wife voice. “It’s not very nice.”

I stared at her, my mouth open. “And, may I remind you, that neither is breaking into your neighbor’s house!”

Then I opened the car door and left one parting shot. “Go home, Emma Sue, and do some more praying.”

She shot me a glance that might’ve withered me if I’d been able to see it better. “Sometimes I wonder about you, Julia.”

“No more than I do, myself,” I assured her, knowing full well that I was the last one to ever know when the Lord was doing the leading, or I was doing my own. Emma Sue, though, bless her heart, never had a doubt in the world.

By the time Emma Sue pulled away from the curb, and I had slipped into the house, feeling my way in the dark, I was so put out I didn’t know what to do. Every time I was called on to help somebody, I ended up wishing I’d turned them down. Emma Sue just had no sense of the proper appreciation for efforts on her behalf.

Heaving a martyr’s sigh, the first thing I did was crumple up the note I’d left for Lillian and Hazel Marie, and throw it away. Better they never knew what I’d been up to. I’d have to listen to Hazel Marie tell me a dozen times over that I could’ve broken a hip and been laid up for the foreseeable future, and Lillian would do nothing but mumble and fuss all day long. So I intended that neither of them knew how close I’d come to being handcuffed and incarcerated. I hated to think what they would’ve said if I’d had to call home for bail money.

As I crept up the front stairs, I heard Lillian going down the back staircase and Hazel Marie stirring around, getting the children ready for school. I headed to my bed, thinking that there were many benefits to being denied the blessing of a child of my own, and one of them was being able to sleep in when I needed to.

And I needed to after such a tumultuous night, but I would’ve slept considerably better if Lillian hadn’t kept coming in to see why I was laid up in bed for half the morning. I finally straggled downstairs about ten o’clock, feeling the consequences of the night’s escapade in every bone in my body. Being a criminal on the run was proving deleterious to my health and well-being in more ways than one.

As soon as I pushed through the kitchen door, I stopped short. Lillian was sitting at the table, crooning to Latisha who was curled up on her lap.

“Is she sick?” I asked, hurrying over to place my hand on the child’s forehead as I’d seen so many mothers do. “She doesn’t feel hot.”

“No’m,” Lillian said, smoothing Latisha’s hair and holding her close to her ample bosom. “This baby missin’ her mama, an’ she feelin’ kinda lonesome this mornin’. We gonna let that ole kindygarden pass us on by today.”

Latisha did look subdued, as she snuggled against Lillian and slipped her thumb in her mouth.

“ ’Sides,” Lillian went on, “she need her some new tenny pumps, so I thinkin’ we go to the store an’ get her some. That make you feel better, won’t it, sweet baby?”

Latisha nodded, and I went to my purse, pulling out a couple of hundred dollar bills. I laid them on the counter and said, “Get her what she needs, Lillian. She can use some shorts and so forth for the summer, something to play with, too. Maybe some sandals, as well as tennis shoes.”

Latisha pulled her thumb out with a plop, and said, “I want me some flip-flops for when I get to that theme park.”

“Sh-h-h,” Lillian said, rocking back and forth. “We get you some flip-flops. Miss Julia,” she said, looking at the bills on the counter, “you don’t need to do that.”

“It’s not a matter of need to, it’s a matter of want to,” I said, as I poured a cup of coffee.

“I thank you then, an’ I bring back the change.”

“I don’t want any change. If you don’t spend it all today, just keep it until she needs something else.”

“Yessum, I ’preciate it. Come on now, Latisha, le’s us go get ready so we get back by lunch time.”

“Don’t hurry, Lillian. It’ll take me all day to wake up. I don’t know why in the world I slept so poorly last night.”

“Well, I don’t neither, but the same thing come down on Miss Hazel Marie. She take Little Lloyd to school, then come back an’ hit the bed again. Y’all better not be gettin’ sick.”

I took my coffee into the living room, hoping the hot caffeine would jump-start my day. But the coffee wasn’t working all that well, for before I knew it, I’d put my head back against the chair, struggling to keep my eyes open. It was all I could do not to succumb to the pull of sleep that would block out the worry over the Mooney woman and what she was up to and how much she’d demand from me. And now I had to add Emma Sue and Hazel Marie to my load of cares. Both of them were convinced that their men were running around. I could easily solve Hazel Marie’s problem, and would when the time was right, but Emma Sue’s was another matter. As far as I was concerned, a man who’d stay out all night and not be where he said he’d be, well, I’d have some questions for him, too.

As for Mr. Pickens, he was as innocent of the charge as such a man could ever be, but if he didn’t soon get back and give Hazel Marie some peace of mind, there was no telling what she’d do. On the other hand, for
my
peace of mind, he needed to stay where he was until he found out what and how much it would take to rid me of the Mooney problem for good.

In spite of these conflicting thoughts running through my mind, my eyelids were getting heavier and heavier. If I could last until the afternoon, I’d feel justified in taking a nap. But one simply does not nap in the middle of the morning. So I tried to concentrate on my lists for Tony Allen’s reception, hoping I had everything delegated and that it would all come together in a social function that would be memorable enough to displace the Mooney woman tales floating around at the garden club, over the bridge tables, and on the telephone lines.

With the muffled sounds of Lillian and Latisha leaving through the back door, my eyes began to close as the house settled into quietness. Just as I was about to drift off, the doorbell jerked me awake. Muttering to myself for not going up to the bedroom so I could ignore a visitor, I pulled myself up and went to the door.

“Julia,” LuAnne cried as she rushed in before I could welcome her. Her hands were flapping and patting her chest, her face was contorted, and she could hardly draw a decent breath. “Oh, Julia,” she gasped, “you’re never going to believe it. It is just the worst thing in the world. I can’t believe it.” Then she peered at me. “You don’t look so good. Are you sick?”